by John Nichols
A hideous revelation shook Joe. His paranoia had fantasized the upcoming conflagration! Under pressure, his mind had floated off its moorings. He had dreamed up the helicopters, Joe Bonatelli’s grapefruit, Jeff Orbison’s offer to bribe Tom Yard. For days, Chamisaville’s gathering surrealism had been but a figment of his schizophrenic imagination. He had projected a hysteria that didn’t exist except in the morbid chambers of his own disintegrating brain!
As she approached him, Iréné Papadraxis’s breasts jiggled tantalizingly behind the slogan “I’m a Real Softy.” Oh no, Joe cried; I’m a goner! No doubt she would slip one hand behind her back, removing a silver, pearl-handled derringer, and plant an odd-caliber hollow-nosed slug in his sternum. As he fell, Diana would reappear, this time packing a loaded police .38, and commence blasting. Heidi, no doubt, would add her two cents with a sawed-off twelve-gauge shotgun spewing those good ol’ double-ought buck loads. Then Ray Verboten would out with his reliable betsy, no doubt a .357 Mag, and deliver the coup de grace.
MINIVER MEETS MONSTROUS MAKER AT MALEVOLENT MONKEY FETE!
Instead, Iréné did worse.
She mortified him mortally by extending an amiable hand and smiling cheerfully. “Hello, Joseph. I’m so glad you could make it.” Her professional politeness chilled him to the bones. How could people experience the depravity they had suffered through last night, and be so detached and civilized next morning? It was like television: you blew each other’s brains out, marched into exterminating ovens, and crippled your opponent for life on the same emotional level at which you bought a car or waxed your kitchen … and nothing truly mattered.
He heard his absurdly lighthearted reply: “Hi yourself. It’s a great day for the party, isn’t it?”
Ozzie and Harriet Visit Lobotomy Land with Mickey Mouse and Rod McKuen!
She betrayed no emotion indicating terror, excitement, or anticipation of the dramatic snatch to come.
But wait! Nancy felt compelled to join the banality orgy. “You’re Iréné Papadraxis, aren’t you? I’m so pleased to meet you. I’ve heard so much…”
Peter Pan in Circle-Jerk Heaven! How could they all be so grown-up? If they all exchanged one more sickly-sweet amenity Joe thought he’d go insane. Better they should leap at each other, tearing hair, gouging eyeballs, shredding tits with their feral teeth! Whatever had happened to passion? Jealousy? Or even Death by Embarrassment?
“I’m having a ball,” Iréné said enthusiastically. “This is all too wonderful and original for words! My book is writing itself. Is that the famous Sasha?” She bent over to pet him. “What a darling little beast.” Sasha snapped at her finger, but Iréné was quick: he missed. “Tut tut,” the foxy lady scolded. “He seems a trifle hostile. Do crowds sour his stomach?”
“Not at all,” Nancy blithely replied. “Isn’t it as if God personally ordered up the day?”
A smooth little man in a pink turban tinkled a triangular gong.
“Chow time,” Nancy chirruped.
“Let’s all sit together,” Iréné liltingly suggested.
They chose a spot in the outer circle. The singing was melodic, lyrical, happy. In spite of himself, Joe found it difficult to prolong his inner discomfort. He actually forgot about the women and the pending squall and felt himself relaxing. He had anticipated a more formal ritual. But everything so far had been casual and pretty. If anybody here had inklings of the trauma about to explode over their heads, they certainly weren’t letting on. A shrine in the center of the circle contained another stuffed monkey and a photograph of Baba Ram Bang. Crammed down into the monkey’s sawdust cranium was a peacefully smoking incense stick.
Nancy said, “Now this isn’t so bad, is it?”
Joe giggled passively, realizing, at long last, that somehow Tribby’s bizarre plan was a thing he had dreamed. He said, “I’m waiting for the moment when they put hooks in their breasts and tear their flesh apart.”
“Honestly—you know something?”
“What?”
“You’re a bona fide idiot.”
“But,” he leered, leaning close to whisper, “I got a great shlong.”
“Let’s put it this way: for a nonspiritual person, you’re not a bad lover.”
People meandered around the ersatz glen obviously ripped and feeling no pain. Sometimes they halted, jabbing fingers into various cauldrons for a preview taste of the upcoming feast. Others merely floated, hailing each other laconically. Everybody “ooh’d” and “ah’d” over Sasha, praising the Lord for his survival. Enthralled in dismembering a gooshy avocado, Sasha paid them little attention. A pretty girl scooped something out of a fruit bowl and tossed it to Joe: a strawberry.
He bit off half, and offered the rest to Nancy. While he held on to the green stem, her pretty white teeth nibbled at the fruit.
“Mmmm … delicious.”
Joe leaned close, licking juice and a fleck of pulp off her lower lip. Relief had him positively euphoric. He would live to flounder another day. In this sort of atmosphere, nothing could go wrong.
Five tipis had been raised in the field near the Pacheco Ditch. People in various stages of undress drifted among the white cone structures. Their oiled torsos glistened. Several couples gave each other massages. Yellow-and-white butterflies zigzagged and flip-flopped through the meadow.
Somebody sat down close behind them; a friendly hand touched his shoulder; a familiar voice said, “Hello, Joey, how’s by you today?”
Oh no, not Heidi!
So here it came: For Reals. They had set him up for her, the two devious and heartless women flanking him! He should have known. Heidi would slide the slim, eight-inch, razor-honed blade between his ribs with a mere flick of her powerful wrist, finding the heart, killing him instantly. Iréné and Nancy would grip his arms before he could fall over, holding him upright for a while, gradually allowing the body to settle backward as if peacefully reclining into sleep.
Again, his imagination had blown it.
“How was the party last night?” Her voice was peppy, noncommittal, neutral. “Did you have fun?”
Joe turned, squinting at her. She met his gaze with absolute blandness. A few red welts, from flying glass bits, marred her otherwise unblemished countenance. How had such tiny cuts released those terrifying scads of blood?
How carefree she seemed! On drugs? Her face was flushed with beauty, her tawny hair feathered as if she had just been running. Too late, he realized anew how much he loved her. At the same time, Joe judged from her creepily disinterested eyes that she could face him calmly today because she had surgically carved from her heart every last filament of emotional connection to him. He didn’t know her anymore: they had never made love or reared kids together. Joe had rarely been left more aghast by an impersonal encounter.
Dimly, he answered her question about the party. “Sure, it was okay.” I sodomized this lady beside me in the Nuzums’ Primal Scream room. “There were lots of people there. And, you know … good eats, good music…”
“Yes, I heard it was a real blast. Aren’t you excited to see the Hanuman?”
Heidi, he wanted to cry, what’s the matter with you? Had a herd of devilish foreign pod-people enzombified everybody’s lilting frames? Only yesterday, at least we wanted to kill each other! We threatened suicide! The children were bawling! I’ve been diddling three other women! “It’s sort of curious so far,” he said nicely. “Very friendly, though.”
“Well, I’ve gotta run.” She bestowed a cool good-bye tap. “There’s Nikita.” And off she bounded before Joe could ask, Where are the kids? The sight of her prancing away, no longer connected to his life, was worse than murder.
Yet presently, the singing, the finger bells jangling, the tinkling wind chimes, the redolent cooking steam, the piñon and cedar smell, the entire slowed-down, semidrugged and laid-back motion of the event created an uneasy serenity in Joe: what else could he do, anyway, except accept the sensuous bovinity completely? A joint traveled down the li
ne—he inhaled deeply more than once. In the far background, Joe saw Eloy Irribarren exit from his house carrying a rifle, which he placed inside his battered pickup: then he returned to his dwelling. Vapidly happy as a little ol’ clam, Joe clamped his arm around Nancy’s shoulder and nuzzled in her hair. His lips touched her ear. He whispered, “Nothing … nothing … nothing…” She giggled. Iréné placed her hand on his thigh: “Isn’t this delightful?” Bradley had wandered off. Sasha gnawed at his cast, biting off little plaster chunks: noisily, he spat them at children gamboling past.
Ay, qué tranquillity! Sunlight enchanted their circle with dappled patterns of brightness. Everybody grew fuzzy. Mellifluized by friendly trembling leaf-shadows, people swayed to their own rhythm, eyes closed. More arrived each minute. They took places behind Joe, building a third, outer circle. They smiled for Rama Unfug’s camera. Eloy emerged from his house again, gingerly carrying a little bag. He paused, staring down through mammoth cottonwoods at the festival. Then he placed the bag in his truck, and retreated slowly to his hovel. When Rachel Parquielli came over to say hello, Joe asked, “Where’s Tribby?”
“He went trout fishing.”
Eyes closed, Joe pictured Tribby alone on this glorious bluebird day. Above his head, as he pumped his arm, line—like a spider’s silver thread—flashed as it uncoiled along the graceful looping curve of its tether, then hissed forward, alighting with barely a ripple on the smooth incandescent surface of a tear-shaped pool.
“Joe, we’re eating.…”
He welcomed a plate, a Dixie cup, plastic spoons. He would have accepted Jim Jonesian strychnine without a murmur, happily slurping up his doom. Various munificent angels supplied him with ice-cold water, a vegetable pourri, little doughballs called ladoo, papadums, a heaping spoonful of potato subji, a yogurt-and-cucumber mix called raita, and some kir.
The plate of goodies Sasha accepted he immediately turned upside down on his head. Everybody laughed tolerantly and lazily allowed as how he was an adorable monkey.
Tentatively at first, then with great gusto, Joe dug in. It was like decorating his gastric temple, known as the Taj Mastomach, with diamonds and rubies and curlicued inlays of ivory! Here, at least, some feeling survived. What a feast! A fleet of eight hummingbirds, their iridescent russet-green backs and ruby throats flashing perkily, zoomed through the fiesta and were gone, buzzing off into the sunny distance. Eloy’s screen door banged faintly once more as the old man headed for his truck again, this time carting several large gunnysacks. He placed these in the bed, stood thoughtfully for a moment, and finally disappeared into his adobe shack once more.
Facing north now, Joe let his eyes wander up the Midnight foothills to mountain peaks barely a dozen miles away. Their snow-colored summits were almost spookily pristine against the absolutely pure blue sky.
It was enough to make anybody believe in magic!
Last vestiges of tension fell off him at the nudge of this sight. Joe sighed and wondered: “Oh dear—am I being born again?” Relaxation entered his flesh (the way smoke must enter a ham), curing him. His shoulders sagged, he half closed his eyes, ceased conversing, and shoveled in the subji, papadums, and raita.
Such bliss! With each mouthful, Joe’s affection for Nancy multiplied. Fate had decreed her to be his rock in the Angry Sea. He would learn to love. If this was one of her scenes, so be it: no more, never again, would he knock it. An innocent passion at play here he found positively beguiling. A person could do worse than spend the rest of their life noshing these eats and laying around in the spring sunshine, glistening with unguents, while expert fingers manipulated sinews, tendons, and muscles until their body felt like a reincarnation of ethereal redemption. Saint Francis, blissfully chatting with warblers and hedgehogs, had nothing on these cats. While his intellect snoozed, and his high blood pressure dissipated, Joe would entertain dozens of cosmic teenyboppers and kundalini freaks lined up outside his tipi prepared to offer themselves up as human prasad.…
He had almost fallen asleep when something hot and wet anointed his right ankle—Sasha, it turned out … urinating. Tch-tch. Nancy framed his face between her palms and further opened his eyes with a kiss. “We can see the Hanuman now.”
“Huh? Isn’t there gonna be a ceremony?”
“No, somebody opened the trailer while we were eating. Everybody can just go over and have a look at their leisure. They don’t believe in confining things by making a self-conscious effort to invest them with importance.”
Standing, Joe swayed dizzily. “Careful, now.” She braced him. “Are you all right?”
“I’m wonderful,” Joe said. “I’m actually groggy with serenity.”
Arm in arm, dragging a reluctant jabbering Sasha, they sauntered across the trampled grass, joining a relaxed flow of people heading for the U-Haul. Its side doors had been opened, revealing the four-foot-high statue set against a blue-velvet altar. Joe stopped and gazed. He had never seen anything so disturbingly androgynous. The white marble figure was naked except for a skimpy red sash about its waist. Posed as if in flight, it had muscular legs and a powerful chest. Only the face and ears seemed monkeylike. One hand held a scepter leafed in gold and jewels—rubies? emeralds? Lord how they glittered! The other hand was limp, very effeminate. Atop the head sat a gold crown. And the expression on the peculiarly elongated monkey-face almost defied description.
Accented by painted orange eyelashes, the half-closed rich brown eyes were effete, sensual. The nostrils seemed prissily tensed, as if smelling a heavenly perfume. Exquisitely painted ruby lips pursed as if to plant a precious little kiss on the powdered cheek of a great-aunt. Overall, the effect was of puzzling power and lassitude, mingled with aesthetic snobbism and homosexuality. Joe did not understand this beautiful and vulgar decadence from another culture.
Out the corner of an eye he saw Eloy emerge from his house yet again, a cowboy hat planted firmly on his head, a pistol in a leather holster on his hip. He climbed stiffly into the truck, started it up, backed around, and headed slowly down the driveway.
Beside Joe a blue-eyed California surfer, her long blond hair twisted into bedraggled Rastafarian dreadnoughts, murmured “I’m in bliss,” swooned, and prostrated herself, quivering enrapturedly.
Sasha strained at his leash, whirling around furiously underneath the U-Haul, kicking apart a pile of prasad. Eloy turned left out of the driveway onto Upper Ranchitos Road. Nikita Smatterling approached Joe, puffing on a pipe. Amiably, he asked, “Well, what do you think?”
“I don’t know. Look at Sasha—he’s smashing all the fruit.”
“Oh, monkeys will be monkeys.”
Nancy said, “It’s gorgeous.”
“When the U-Haul first arrived, before any of us even had a look, the vibes emanating from it were incredible. We had a heated debate over whether or not to display it in a public way, for fear the power would be too strong for those not used to dealing with it.”
Rama Unfug was awed. “It’s incredible.” He aimed his camera at Sasha’s destructive antics and pulled the trigger.
Several people produced Instamatics. Iréné sidled up to Joe, saying, “What do you think?”
“Hard to say.” His only hit off it was ambiguity. He hadn’t expected anything so grotesque and lovely. But ultimately, it left him cold. After their languorous scarfing time, Joe had almost hoped the painted marble could thrill him into a better life. Instead, the neutrality bored him. He lifted his eyes to the clean mountain snowfields and the ultrasonic sky in which a single black raven circled, glinting once—suddenly—like a gunshot every 360 degrees at that point where its wings caught the sunlight.
And then all of a sudden it came over him—a terribly dark and menacing cloud, a burgeoning thunderhead, an urgent cry of lamentation. Dizziness almost forced him to his knees, and Diana’s loaded pistol came alive in his grasp … he nearly swooned from an attack of bellicosity. A sense of outrage (over the swindle, the complacency around him) such as he had rarely experienced
compelled Joe to close his eyes quickly so nobody could see the frightening devils aborning underneath his quivering shell. The wound, an enormous rent in the center of his heart, left him breathless.
Joe opened his eyes. The statue’s perverse and ominous eyes regarded him haughtily. They stroked him with sensual, more-superior-than-thou disdain. They rebuffed and mocked and baffled; they were sinister and derisive, fraudulent and farcical. Cancer was spreading across the land like a plague, yet hundreds of insidious new chemicals reached the markets every month. The ozone was about to perish. The earth itself was becoming leached out, poisoned, useless. Though only six percent of the world’s population, Americans consumed thirty-six percent of its resources. Millions of soldiers, laundered greenbacks, corrupt puppets, and CIA assassination squads kept those resources coming. In fact, they assured that Americans would have eaten the entire earth by the year 2000! Nuclear wastes, impossible to dispose of, waited to be disposed of. Priorities were technological instead of human. The system ate the soul first, in order to nourish the body—half the budget went for weaponry. Like a sick, vengeful moon, the Ku Klux Klan was rising.…
Where was the helicopter?
Nancy said, “Can you believe it?”
“Believe what?” he mumbled dimly from the heart of a tumultuous isolation.
“This. That. The Hanuman.”
“Do you like it?” His voice reverberated oddly in his own ears.
“I love it.”
“Why?”
She winked gently. “Because it’s there.”
Egon Braithwhite sneaked up behind them and hiss-whispered into Joe’s left ear: “Oro goiboi! Cha chee kow uru bonangie!”
“You son of a bitch!”
He’d had it. Never again! No more! Joe whirled and, screaming “Speak English!,” he uncranked a bolo punch that connected with Egon’s temple. The bearded beanpole dropped, poleaxed, and Joe landed on his back, flailing away hysterically, punching, kneeing, even savagely biting Egon’s whiskers! God damn if this retarded clown would ridicule him one minute longer! If he had to tear out the maniac’s tongue and grind it beneath his heels, Joe could do it! Passionate angry words gurgled in his throat; they emerged nonsensically in sputtering blasts of incoherency! He pummeled the squeaking nudnik, who seemed incapable of fighting back. In fact, Egon curled into a protective tuck, and in very short order Joe found himself belaboring a human armadillo. Heaping insanity atop insanity, Egon pled for his life in his make-believe language. ‘Ho mangi noguchi! Ow ow ow! Choro me no go chabitsu! Oro guduyakki! Ay ay ay!” Showing no mercy, Joe tried to bang him into silence. He hadn’t been in a fight, in a real down-to-earth, playground-style, hit-’em-with-everything-you-got fracas since childhood days. And for a moment, he exulted. Hot dog, warm puppy, cold frank! Hit ’em with a left, hit ’em with a right, stand up, siddown, fight fight fight! A week of frustration catapulted from his body through his flying fists! Joe unleashed a triumphant cry—half bloodthirsty, a quarter Tarzanian, one-eighth triumphant, another eighth apologetic.